July 2012 - Probing a super-giant shell of gas and stars

In one of the largest known star formation regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, lie young and bright stellar groupings like this one, which is known as LH 72. It consists of a few young, high-mass stars embedded in a dense nebula of hydrogen gas. Radiation from the stars makes the gas light up like a red fluorescent sign